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gunnarthor

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Everything posted by gunnarthor

  1. gunnarthor
    Baddoo could do it on the position player side. Graterol and Thorpe have true ace potential (in the last five years or so, only six or seven Twins prospects could arguably have that kind of upside - Meyer, Stewart, Jay, Berrios, Thorpe and maybe Romero and Graterol). The "Kepler second tier" prospect group (not quite elite but damn good, probably ranked 20-40ish on lists) could include quite a number of these guys like Kiriloff, Rooker, Gordon, Miranda (I like him a lot, too), etc.
  2. gunnarthor
    The reality is that Lavine is using the same roadmap that Ryan used but so far his moves are working out. And that's basically what we should expect. Both stayed cheap in FA, signed discount bullpen arms. Both signed rule v picks and made waiver claims, let young guys play, traded off upcoming FA, etc. Our payroll was bottom third last year. I expect it will remain bottom third for the foreseeable future. So Levine is going to have to make trades, find FA bargains and rely on young players. That's more or less been what the Twins have had to do for 25 years and it'll continue. I liked last years draft but I'm not ready to put it ahead of 2012 or 2016 (the secret of all three drafts was the number of picks in the first few rounds, not necessarily high draft position). IBP money for prospects is fine with me. I'd have been fine with them signing someone, too. Just so long as they use it. We won't know how good Lavine is for several years but I like him a lot and think he'll be a very good GM. But I do think we should wait a little bit for all this excitement.
  3. gunnarthor
    Man, it'll be interesting to see how TD rejoices once the new FO actually makes a move for something slightly better than a C prospect or mid-level FA.
  4. gunnarthor
    That was the original deal. But when they found an anomaly in his arm, they demanded another pick from Aiken - Mac Marshall. Aiken and his agent said no, stalemate happened and none of the three kids were able to sign. Nix was able to file grievance.
  5. gunnarthor
    That's not quite right. People were pissed that the Astros were using the injury as a way to secure a third player (after Jacob Nix) named Mac Marshall out of Aiken's bonus. The medical issue they saw was similar to other picks and those picks had their bonuses lowered by several hundred thousand dollars, not 1.5m, which coincidentally happened to be Marshall's demand. Nix and Marshall's agreements were therefore locked into a third party (Aiken). Nix filed his grievance against the Astros and won (Astros settled for 1m+ before the arbitrator ruled against them). I'm hoping that the Twins didn't **** over Marte on the hopes of getting a better prospect but I think they did.
  6. gunnarthor
    Honestly, I'm not sure but I think it's roughly fair. 1m on the IBP isn't all that much - most elite players sign for more and you can go the quantity route and nab some guys for less - so I think what we got in return - avg ML regular guys as ceilings - is decent. Also, we're not paying money (Pohlad = cheap) but rather giving our ability to spend money to the other teams. At the end of the day, I think this was a defensible move and far better than not doing anything (which is what I thought they'd do) but it's also not evidence that Levine is playing three dimensional chess while Ryan would be playing checkers.
  7. gunnarthor
    They changed it to after the world series.
  8. gunnarthor
    I agree with #1 - if the new FO can keep the window of opportunity open it'll be because they were able to bring up another wave of prospects like Ryan was able to do. But #2 - we're too far away from having an idea on that. Yes the draft looks good but these kids have been playing ball for 3 months. Way too early to determine if they drafted well.
  9. gunnarthor
  10. gunnarthor
    Knobby beat up his wife a week before he was going to be inducted. Justin and Johan will be inducted but neither one has officially retired yet.
  11. gunnarthor
    I'm not opposed to this move but it's not something to get too excited about yet. Both are probably outside our top 20 prospects but are probably better bets than 16 year old kids so I'm good with it.
  12. gunnarthor
    Woah, is this Twinkie Town?
  13. gunnarthor
    Before you can grade how good/bad they are as our new FO. They've been given a golden opportunity here so the big question - at least to me - is if they can keep a window of opportunity open longer than others. One of the reasons I thought Ryan was very good was that he more or less kept a very low payroll team competitive for basically a decade. Levine has been gifted with an incredibly talented and young roster. The Twins are good. They're going to make the playoffs several times in the next few years. Can our new FO push them over the top? Can they keep that window open longer or are we going to fall back into a more traditional cycle of competitiveness? We won't know the answers for awhile. Their first draft was encouraging.
  14. gunnarthor
    Meh. Run differential, during the season, probably isn't all that predictive. We use it at the end of the season and it might be more useful but RD after 103 games? There's gotta be some room for error in that. We were 4.5 back of the Royals who we had a lot of games left against and who we were better than. They had a quick run in July that made them seem better than they were (9-0 run w/+ 40 run differential Det and Chicago). No one thought the Royals were all of a sudden a good team. But again, that misses two points. First, do we expect our FO to be smarter than fangraphs? Second, the question, as I understand it, was whether the FO helped the team this year. I think we can agree that by selling off Garcia and especially Kintzler, they hurt us by weakening two important parts of the team. Maybe it helps in the long run but it made this year harder.
  15. gunnarthor
    I think we pick up two pitchers this offsesaon. One in free agency for sure and maybe another in FA or through trade. So opening day it's something like - Darvish (sure) Santana Berrios Cole (yep, that'll happen) Gibson Realistically, it's probably something like Cobb/Lynn and Odrozzi.
  16. gunnarthor
    I'm really torn on Santana. I like a big hall. I like a lot of seasons. I don't love short peaks. But at the end of the day, you only need 10 MLB seasons to be considered for the hall. Not 15 or 18. So people with shorter careers should get in. I don't like that we've put short peak guys with long careers in (Tim Raines had a five year peak worth 32 WAR and then played from 88-02 and amassed 30 WAR). And Santana was undoubtedly considered the best pitcher in baseball for a number of years and won two Cy Young awards. I'd vote him in. I'm not sure how the actual voters will treat him. Raines is an interesting comparison. In 12 seasons, Santana topped 4 WAR 7x, 5 WAR 5x, 6 WAR 4x, 7 WAR 4x. Raines, in 21 seasons, topped 4 WAR 6x, 5 WAR 6x, 6 WAR 4x, 7 WAR 1x. If we decided that Raines short peak is hall worthy, shouldn't Santana's peak - which was longer in much fewer seasons, be a HOFer? I mean, no one put Raines in the hall because of how he played in the 90s. But voters sorta rejected that argument with Nomar. In 14 seasons, Nomar topped 4 WAR 6x, 5 WAR 6x, 6 WAR 6x, 7 WAR 2x but he wasn't in. So I think Santana should be in but, like Nomar, will be given short shrift.
  17. gunnarthor
    I disagree. I want our new FO to be smarter than fangraphs baseruns. I think the CYA approach a lot are giving them here is based on what we as fans without internal knowledge knew or should have known. We did lose the WC game so trading Kinztler didn't hurt us in that game. But I think that misses the point. We weakened our bullpen by trading him and got back a C prospect. Since we made the playoffs, what were our chances of winning a one gamer? 33%? 45%? And if we did, would having a stronger bullpen been something we would have wanted in the playoffs even if in that one game it didn't matter? The FO hurt us in 2017, full stop. How much they hurt us is open for debate and how much they helped improve future years is open to debate. I'm certainly willing to give them more time but at best you can only give them an incomplete.
  18. gunnarthor
    McKay, Ohtani and ?
  19. gunnarthor
    I think this is a pretty easy answer. He'll start the season as part of the rotation in AAA. Unless something goes horribly wrong, he'll be the first starter up when we need a new one. I think our AAA rotation will include Mejia, May, Gonsavles and Romero, which gives the team some depth.
  20. gunnarthor
    I don't think we have to worry about Hughes. He'll show up for ST and if he's somehow hitting 92 again, great. If he's throwing mid 80s, I think they'll put him in the pen/DL or just release him. But the Twins shouldn't go into the season expecting anything from him and make him force their hand. If he's a pleasant surprise, great!
  21. gunnarthor
    The only thing surprising was that the Yankees were left out.
  22. gunnarthor
    I cannot for the life of me see why the Reds, an obvious rebuilding team, would take on Santana (and potentially 27m) for Stephenson. That's madness. Santana isn't a fit for a rebuilding team. He'd make sense for the Angels or Seattle or any other playoff contention team that wants to make their rotation deeper.
  23. gunnarthor
    For what it's worth - honest question, is it worth anything? - Steamer predicts Santana to throw 184 innings and be about 1.9 fWAR next year. Lynn they have at 150ip and 1.5 fWAR w/Santana having the slightly lower fip.
  24. gunnarthor
    I don't think Morris is a slam dunk guy. I think he's borderline but he is comparable to HOFers, his numbers when he retired were pretty good and he has his own unique story (as Poz would put it) that I would push him in. Stieb isn't anywhere close to that. I think Santana is a borderline candidate as well with a totally different story. They just don't seem comparable to me.
  25. gunnarthor
    I love in the post right before this you say "we can't look at what they did!" and immediately do that. If both were FA, Santana would be #3 behind Darvish and Arriata. Lynn would be looking for that 100m deal and would likely get 4/60m or so. Santana would end up getting 2/30 or so b/c of his age. Seems like some people might say a 31 year old coming off a near 5.00 fip after surgery with control problems might not be the safe bet. In any event, you keep making the same argument - Santana is a pumpkin. Fine, we get it. Then the Twins should sell him for peanuts. But it's possible that fip isn't the end-all, be-all stat. Or that a strong defense negates it. Or that his fip may go down. His fastball didn't decrease last year. He's remained very durable (oops, that's looking at past history, my bad). His k-rate and walk rates were essentially the same. The big change was more flyballs = more home runs this year, which is why fip and fWAR didn't like him as much. Looking at a batted ball profile a few things jump out - he gave up more flyballs and infield flys than he usually does while lowering the amount of line drive hits. Is that random? Is that how he and Castro decided to attack opposing players? More stuff up in the zone? I have no idea. But I think if you want to trade him and lose 200 innings you'd really want to know for sure.
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